This document provides an overview of search engine optimization (SEO) including how search engines work, important SEO building blocks like keywords, crawlers and links, and SEO tools. It defines SEO as designing webpages to maximize their ranking in search results for selected keywords. Key aspects of SEO include choosing relevant keywords, making pages crawler-friendly through simple navigation and cross-linking, and developing quality inbound links from other sites to increase page importance. The document recommends approaches like keyword research, optimizing page titles and content, and developing links through quality content while avoiding black hat techniques that violate search engine guidelines.

1. Search Engine
Optimization (SEO)

2. 2
Topic Outline
 Introduction
 How Search Engines Work
 SEO Building Blocks
• Keywords
• Crawler
• Links
 SEO Tools
 Summary and Conclusion

3. 3
Introduction

4. 4
Definition of Search Engine
Optimization (SEO)1
"Natural," or "organic," search engine
optimization (SEO) is designing, writing, and
HTML-coding a Web site to maximize the
chance its pages will appear at the top of
spider-based search engine results for
selected keywords and phrases
Organic Listings: Listings that search engines
do not sell (unlike paid listings)

5. 5
SEO
 Iterative process
 Dynamic environment
 Art
 Science

6. 6
Why is it important?
 Internet advertising 1H 2006 : $7.9
Billion2
 Search ranking more site visitors
 Internet users tend not to click through
 Depends on webs role in your
economic model

7. 7
Variation in Approaches
White Hat
 Abide by terms and conditions set forth by
search engines
Black Hat
 Breaches search engine terms and conditions
 May provide short-term gains
 You run the risk of being penalized by search
engines

8. 8

9. 9
Defining Success (Context)
Search-Friendly (SEO)
• High ranking
• Terms and conditions set by search engines
(Google, Yahoo, MSN Search)
User-Friendly
• Site must satisfy the needs of visitors
Persuasive
• Profitable for site owner

10. 10
How Search Engines Works

11. 11
Search Engine Operations
1. Gather Content
• Crawler or spider moves recursively
downloading content
1. Builds sophisticate index
2. Individual web searches run against
index
• Results are retrieved and ordered
• PageRank & Relevance

12. 12
Google Search Placement4
Placement: importance and relevance
 PageRank (importance)
• Counts links
• Weights links
 Query matching (relevance)
• sophisticated text-matching techniques
• examines all aspects of the page's content
(and the content of the pages linking to it)

13. 13
SEO Optimization

14. 14
SEO Optimization Categories
 Keywords
• Keyword selection and keyword-rich text
 Crawler
• A crawler-friendly site navigation scheme
 Links
• Link popularity

15. 15
Keyword Recommendations1
 Page title: visible HTML text ,“Above the fold”
 Page Size: "100 KB" limit is still is still widely
held. The optimum page size is 500-3000
words (or 2000 to 20,000 characters)
 Be specific
 Example: “Apple iPod” verses “iPod”
• exact phrase should appear generously throughout
your site copy on every page

16. 16
More Keyword
Recommendations5
Meta tags: use but don’t stuff
 <meta name="description" content="Free Web tutorials on HTML, CSS, XML,
and XHTML">
Alt tags: use for graphics

<IMG src="star.gif" alt=“star logo">
Content is king
 Write good content with relevant and important keywords in
mind.
Geo Targeting
 Add geocentric terms to target local areas
Domain Names
 Use keywords as part of domain name

17. 17
Crawler-friendly
 Engine spiders are primitive beings
• choose simplicity over complexity
 Goal
• All your web pages seen by crawlers
• Google: enter in searchbox
“allinurl:utexas.edu”

18. 18
Suggestions to be Crawler
Friendly5
 Traditional <a href> tag
 Keywords in subfolder names
 Minimize quantity of subfolders
 Cross link relevant terms and phrases
within the site
 Multiple paths to pages to eliminate
orphans

19. 19
Avoid or Minimize: May
Negatively Impact Crawler5
 Flash (slow to load and difficult to
navigate)
 Frames
 Java navigation
 Session ID to track visitors
 exact same Title tags on every page
 set to require a cookie when a visitor
gets to the page

20. 20
Link Development
Inbound Links Impact PageRank
PageRank (Popularity, importance)
 Number and quality of links pointing to a
website
 Measure of usefulness of site

21. 21
Link Development Tradeoffs
 Advantage
• it is dynamic, cumulative, and difficult to
imitate
 Disadvantage
• takes time (vs. advertising)

22. 22
Link Development Approaches
(White Hat)7
 Quality content to start with
 Cultivate quality link (not quantity)
 Begin with web directories
 Harness online publicity
 Use Blogs and forums wisely
 Investigate competitors
• Understand their strategy
• Online publicity, blogs and forums
• See inbound links ("link:domain.com" in Google,
"linkdomain:domain.com" in Yahoo)

23. 23
SEO Tools

24. 24
Search Engine Term and
Conditions
 Google
 Yahoo
 MSN Search

25. 25

26. 26
Vendor Tools Example:
Seo Administrator 8
 Ranking monitor: site positioning in for keywords
 Link popularity checker: checks inbound links
 Site indexation tool: check site indexation
 Server Log-analyzer: Administrator log analyzer
 PageRank analyzer: analyze competitor sites
 Keywords tool: suggestions, associations, competitor analysis
 HTML analyzer: dissect html text in the same way that a search
engine would (syntax, keyword density)

27. 27

28. 28
Online Resources

29. 29
Search Engine Standards
Google
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40349&ctx=related
Yahoo
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/basics/basics-18.html
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/basics/basics-17.html
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/basics/index.html
MSN
http://search.msn.com/docs/siteowner.aspx?t=SEARCH_WEBMASTER_REF_GuidelinesforOptimizingSit
Web Robots
http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/robots.html
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp/index.html
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?topic=8843

30. 30
Keyword Tools
Overture tool
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion
Wordtracker tool [recommended]
http://our.affiliatetracking.net/wordtracker/a/12246
Google Sandbox Tool
https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox
Espotting Tool
http://www.espotting.com/popups/keywordgenbox.asp
Related Pages
http://www.related-pages.com/adwordskeywords.aspx

31. 31
Conclusion and Summary
Website Success
 Search-friendly
 User-friendly
 Persuasive
Search-friendly Optimization components
 Keywords
 Crawler
 Links

32. 32
Bibliography
1
Thulow, Shari. “What Search Engine Marketing Does Your Site Need?”
Clickz. 15 Nov. 2006 <
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3105241 >.
2
“2006 Second Quarter Results (October 4, 2006) .” Interactive Advertising
Bureau. 15 Nov. 2006 <
http://www.iab.net/resources/ad_revenue.asp >.
3
“Event Homepage.” Search Engine Strategies 2006 Conference and
Exposition. 15 Nov. 2006
<http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/sew/winter06/index.html >.
4
“Our Search: Google Technology.” Google Website. 15 Nov. 2006
< http://www.google.com/technology/index.html >.

33. 33
Bibliography
5
Laratro, Joe. “Dos and Don’ts of Search Engine Optimization.”
MoreVisibility. 15 Nov. 2006
<http://www.morevisibility.com/whitepaper/2006/SEO_Do_and_
Donts_WP.pdf>
6
Thulow, Shari. “Link Development: The Key to Successful SEO ”
Clickz. 15 Nov. 2006 <http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?
page=3431741 >.
7
link farming. webopedia. 15 Nov. 2006
<http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/l/link_farming.html>.
8
SSEO Tools. SEO Administrator.
<http://www.seoadministrator.com/seo-tools.html>
<http://seo-tutorial.seoadministrator.com/>